Mechanical behavior of barrel vaults

"The static behaviour and the free dynamics of barrel vaults are the object of this paper. Vaults are. modeled as linear elastic shells with single constant curvature. Starting from the assumption that. in the barrel vaults two families of mono-dimensional interacting beams exist (straight beams in the. longitudinal direction and arches in the transversal direction), a semi-analytical approximate solution. is proposed, to investigate the static behaviour of barrel vaults. According to the found solution, a. classification in ’short’ or ’long’ barrel vaults is proposed, as it occurs for the beams on elastic soil.. Graphical abaci are obtained to facilitate the classification. Concerning the free dynamics of the. barrel vaults, an approximated approach is proposed to obtain the frequencies and the eigenfunctions. of the vault. Also in this case the approach is based on the recognition of the existence of families. of mono-dimensional beams inside the vault"